Admit your Garage Mistakes

[FLYXR6]

Originally Posted by Jastel

Done most of these at some time or another, except setting car/person on fire

My best story is we were checking the oil, water etc on a friends Pajero just before he drove back to Brisbane and left a Makita rechargeable torch under the bonnet. Friend drove back to Brisbane which is about 2000kms from my place.
About a week later I realised I was missing the torch and thought when I last used it, called friend and asked if he put it away somewhere different or something, NO he says, I say just go check under your bonnet, there it was, fallen down between the radiator and something else.
He had taken his car into Mitsubishi down there after his trip for a service as well and they never found it

Got it back a few weeks later via a 3rd friend who was coming to visit

Anyone got a tool that has travelled further?? And returned safely.

Don't know if its further but.......
Left my breaker bar on a Tremco truck (interstate prime mover) a little while ago, Truck left Melbourne for Perth on the friday night made it all the way back to Perth, Monday morning I noticed my breaker bar missing, Boss called up Tremco to see if it had appeared anywhere? They went out and checked the truck on tuesday........ Breaker bar still stuck in between the chassis rail and fuel tank..... Got it back the following Friday when the truck (and driver) came back for its weekly run. Total trip about 7000kms..........

[BJ TE50]

A few years ago in my dads workshop I had my EA up on a two poster hoist with a stand underneath the gearbox to lift it up a bit. I went to raise the hoist up so i could get the stand out but i turned the knob the wrong way :

It bent the stand which slipped out from underneath the gearbox and pierced a hole in the floor near the gearbox tunnel and the EA lifted off one of the hoist arms and twisted around a bit. The car was saved from falling off by the friction between the rubber end on the arm with where the door bulges out. Getting it back on all four hoist arms was fun too :

I found a pic where you can see the dent it left in the front door.

[Dezza]

When we did the manual conversion on my EA, I decided to swap over the pedal box as I got one with all the parts. I could have just used a mal wood pin that allows you to attach the clutch pedal to the auto pedal box, but it sounded a bit dodgy to me. Anyway, to get the pedal box out, we had to remove the dash. After a couple of hours mucking around with the dash, we finally got it and the pedal box out. Only then did we realise that the pedal box we had taken out was identical to the one we were going to put in! The one I had got with the conversion was an auto one! We ended up putting the same pedal box back in that we had spent hours trying to get out and made up a custom clutch pin!

[saber]

My biggest mistake was when I was changing the clutch on my XF for the first time. Took me ages to get the clutch alligned properly, but I after all that time I forgot to tighten the pressure plate bolts (the ones that bolt onto the flywheel). A 5min drive completely shredded a brand new clutch, took off the bellhousing and little shreds just floated out!!

[Da_Sheep]

Me and a mate once re built an engine, but neva started it, and we had a piece left over and for the life of us we could not work out where the piece came from, only to find out about a year later when another mate was changing a dizzy for me that, that piece was the oil pump drive.... thank god we didnt start that engine.

[Road Games]

Orright, in 87 started working in the mines. Thought everything that was yellow ran on diesel including our poor 2.0lt escort engined forklift. The night i came around the work shop was priceless, Roscoe & DR BOB said why is DAZZLER drivin that way? Shorty said Probably filled it up with Diesel HaHaHaHaHa.. Guess what?? Dad had me out on loading dock next day sniffin unleaded/ kerosine/ diesel so that mistake would never happen again... Guess what??? Kerosine & unleaded BOTH came in big silver drums!!!! So next time i filled FREDDY Forklift up with kero/ and thats why i have no brain cells left Good Night All... :

[Unco]

^^ ROFL!!

[JamesR]

not sure if i already posted in this thread..

the engine in the old escort was a bit buggered, so i bought another one.. no worries..
took old motor out, didnt take too long, left auto in car as didnt have the room to lift motor and auto out as one.
so i set about getting new motor in, got it in engine bay no probs, lined up motor to auto, started to bolt together, but it wasnt quite going together right.. tried to turn engine over, woulnt budge..
pulled motor back out only to realise that new motor was from a manual, and had a spigot bearing.... woops.
overall it took me a weekend and a few days after work to change motors over..

[brad graham]

put leads on dizzy cap clockwise instead of anti clockwise old six ran on about three with timing either madly advanced or badly retarded thought lifters might have bled down so gave her a bootful for about five minutes sounded really crappy redone leads and it ran like it should

[BaYa]

not having a garage

[snailracing]

Jacking up my old RX7 using the oil cooler as the jacking point!

[Vdouw]

Snapped the head clean off a nut flush with the block on my XH I6 ... 2 hrs later and the bolt drilled out with new thread cut in and its all good ... but some old falcon at the wrecker has no bolts left in its engine ... thought i would take some spares

[Big Bros Toy]

Changing the pittman arm on the xt was an adventure into the stupid. It took me hours to get the old f$$$er off before spendin another couple of head scratchin hours tryin to get the new bugger on.. only to realize i had to have the wheels straight not full lock to line the thing up .. what a peanut the bugger lined straight up when i got pointed in the right direction and i thought i was so close before..lol

Another one was when me dirt bike gave up mid ride so i pushed the thing about about 3 k's through town (bloody cop bait) to get it to me brothers only for him too look down and turn me fuel on for me and laugh... Then me ridin it all the way home with the choke up wonderin why it was splutterin ( went good when held flat ) boy i felt like a f%$kstick...

[flukey77]

Originally Posted by AUII_Forte

My biggest mistake......I bought an EA:P

Holy there seem to be a heap of people who dont like the EA's or must have had a bad experience with them. We have an old CFI EA wagon that we bought second hand in 91 and the thing is a tank!! It has done over 320,000kms on the original engine and still isnt missing a beat, despite our best efforts to thwart it by giving it minimal maintenance and generally neglecting the poor thing. The autobox was replaced at 305,000kms because it started acting up, and we have replaced an alternator and a power steering pump. Deadset this car is the reason that a few long time Holden fans now have Blue blood flowing through their veins.

[Yellow_Festiva]

Using house bricks under the car jack to raise the car extra high to get under the front end. Lower the car, return the jack to the car, forgetting the brick was there, then either driving over it or reversing over it, hearing the THUD and thinking to myself what i just drove into or broke before remembering i had left the brick on the floor....

[walker]

Originally Posted by lv619

Unfortunatly I fell for the same mistake... their should be some sort of support group for people like us.:togo:

Thank ****** for that I'm not the only 1, I will sleep easy now

[ZA-289]

Originally Posted by 4Vman

1) Trying to start a 302 windsor (un be-knowens that the dissy was put back in 180 deg out of sync), my mate was cranking it over while i was looking down the carb to see if it had fuel them POOOF! it backfired through the carb and i lost my eyebrows and fringe!
2) trying to get a truamatic 3 speed to push up flat onto the engine flange of a 308 and using the mounting bolts to "pull" it up, after a fair amount of tension on the bolts (more torque is better right?) i heard a loud "crack" after realling away if fright i noticed id snapped the bell housing in half (torque convertor wasnt lined up into the end of the crank properly).

my mate did that!, whoops! the bell housing is integral to the trans on one of those! not seperate like some! throw the trans in the bin!!!

My best effort was changing the valley cover gaskets on my 351W ZA, pulled the valley off and stuck some rags down the ports to stop little bits of gasket falling in, painted the valley cover, some new gaskets and Put it back together, the car was off the road at the time. I then spent the next 6 months trying to start it!, towed it to about 4 mechanics, asked 6,000 different people their opinions of why it wouldn't start. We decided that the valve seats had gone rusty from sitting around and it needed a valve lap. So i bit the bullet one weekend and decided to pull the heads of and lap the valves. Only got as far as pulling the valley of again, WHEN I SAW THE RAGS STILL DOWN TO PORTS.

I copped some serious **** over that one!

[whynot]

Left the oil filler cover off the wife’s Corolla, sprayed oil all over the engine bay. Then cleaned the said engine bay with degreaser, filled two spark plug sockets with water.

Bought front and rear sway bar bushes, only to find out that this model Corolla does not have them.

Only tightened the wheel nuts on the old man’s XB to finger tight after changing the brake pads.

Swapped the starter motor in my XC once upon a time; only to find out it was a dead battery causing the problem (and I am suppose to be an electrician).

During an oil change I drain the oil, then leave the plug out and flush a litre or so though to clean out the rubbish in the bottom of the sump. Forgot to reinstall the sump plug one time, and ended up flushing another five litres through. That wasn’t so bad, the bad part was the oil overflowed the collection bucket under the car and ran down the driveway. Wife made me clean up the mess and paid out on me the whole time

Changed the brake drums in an old AP5 Valiant once; didn’t realise that new pads should be bedded in. Drove around like an idiot trying out my new brakes. I glazed the pads in about 50 miles. At the same time, I changed the shock absorbers; buggered one of them as well.

Rotated the tyres out of sequence: that was a big mistake.

[El Hamburglo]

I once put the battery on the wrong way around in my XF. Tried turning it over and the starter was making a strange grinding noise and the dash (digital) wouldn't light up.

Turns out it cooked pretty much everything. Fried the stereo, the amplifier, the ECU and my dignity.

[XM-221]

I spent two days laying on my back under my first car (Spazda RX2) cleaning the body deadener from the underside with a sharpened wood chisel ready for painting in body colour ... only to have the chisel catch on a spot weld splatter... belted it with my hand (towards my face) and ended splitting my nose from base to bridge with said chisel that required 12 stitches to make right again. Not a nice way to spend your 18th birthday lol.

[56L]

1-Whilst changing yet another broken valve spring in my pursuit 250,i had the compressor on flat out and pumped the cylinder up with air to hold the valve up whilst replacing spring.
Heres the stupid part,i had left it in gear and the compressor had enough power to wind the engine over causing the car to roll forward and pin me against the shed wall. :

2-After holding the kick starter down on my cr250 to fix it i let it go and it gave me a huge uppercut :

3-Whilst servicing my mack truck in the army i walked across the underground servicing pit and slipped in and caved all my teeth in on the angle iron surrounding the pits edge :

[asusdragon]

did a headgasket on my first car an 1990 camry, got it all back together and it started fine for 20seconds then would die, tried bout 10times always the same, try a few different things over the week but nothing would help, was bout to strip it back down when i looked at the iarbox and i had forgotten to plug the butterfly cable back it, started after that
Other one was has to put a new I6 in my El fairmont because i though the bottom end was rooted (this is a another story still really p***ed off bout wasted close to $2500 too) but drop the engine in put everything back in and went to start it wouldnt go check everything over nope all good spraied some of that start you bastard stuff in nothing used bout a can of this stuff still nothing went looking at everything till i came to the fuel lines swap the round, started then i put the fuel line to the regulator and the return line to the fuel rails opps (come on i thought it went that way with the fuel being regulated to the fuel rail)

[aquahead2001]

Spent 6 months salary and countless nights working on an SS Torana, using only the best money could buy and a lot of hard work. Had the well worked 308 motor in the fully painted and detailed engine bay, filled it full of water and fired it up. Started first go (proud as punch!!!) but within 5 minutes there was a bit of drip that quickly turned into a flood.

I'd used genuine Holden steel head gaskets, but not the goop Holden used with them....

A frantic tear down in the engine bay saved the engine but not my pride. My Dad was still telling the story 10 years later.

[JBomb3000]

A mate of mine bought a new holden barina for his missus to drive. Being tight when it was due for it's first service he decided to do it himself. Drained the oil and wacked on a new filter the proceded to fill her up with new oil. Only put in half a 4 litre and it was showing over full thought it was a bit odd so his missus drove it 2km's home and he decided he'd check it again the next day.

Still showing over full so he thought he'd better drain some out. Dropped the plug but nothing came out. Hmm, after much pondering and upon inspection of his brother it was determined he'd drained the transmision oil.

[XR8 Uterous]

A spilt car wash in the garage once... Dad split on it and fell over and did ligament damage to his arm. Woops.

[fmc351]

Originally Posted by 56L

3-Whilst servicing my mack truck in the army i walked across the underground servicing pit and slipped in and caved all my teeth in on the angle iron surrounding the pits edge :

Jesus Christ on a stick, that sounds painful.

[dave289]

once i put down my screwdriver and just could'nt remember where i put it.anybody had this happen to them.very recently missing tool syndrome.

[Fev]

i havnt done any mechanical atrocities as of yet, but i have (stupidly) used some spray paint matched to my car to cover of some scratches on my rear drivers quarter panel

AND THEN i sprayed over it with a top coat cuz it looked like crap. now it looks worse.

:( lol im gettin it fixed soon

[XR Van]

my best one was that i screwed together a resonably hot 250 2v to go inot my missus' xm. we got the engine together and into the bay, everything looked great. got fuel up primed the oil pump with a cleaveland oil pump drive and a drill. started it and the bottom end started squeeling about 3mins into running it so i shut it down. out came oil pressure guages and for the life of me i could not find out why i had no oil pressure.

dropped the sump in the car and took the pump off only to find i hadn't put the 250 oil pump drive back in when i had reinstalled the dizzy. luckily not any damage to the crank just some new bearings.

[aussiblue]

once i put down my screwdriver and just could'nt remember where i put it.anybody had this happen to them.very recently missing tool syndrome.

These events are called "Seniors Moments" and unfortunately they will become more frequent. Being on the wrong side of 50 I have been having them myself more often. I've already lost a few good tools left in the engine bay and later found some I have left there and hadn't even realised I had mislaid. Off to buy a replacment 22mm spanner I have lost somewhere today. Have teenagers that like to 'borrow' my good tools adds to the confusion and doesn't help at all.

I now try to immediately put away each tool in its place as soon as I have finished using it. The big problem though is my glasses. I am very short sighted and have to take them my specs off to do close work and then can't find them (and not having them on makes it extremely difficult for me to search and see where they might be).